“Blue Painting” by Vasily Kandinsky

“Blue Painting” by Vasily Kandinsky was produced during his Bauhaus period, in Germany where Kandinsky taught basic design and advanced theory and where he also conducted painting classes. His examinations of the effects of forces on straight lines led to his contrasting tones on curved and angled lines. Geometrical elements took on increasing importance, particularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves.

Kandinsky augmented his colour theory with new elements of visual psychology, and he was influenced by the research of Gestalt psychologists. In the study of perception, Gestalt psychologists stipulate that perceptions are the products of complex interactions among various stimuli. The gestalt effect is the capability of our brain to generate whole forms, particularly concerning the visual recognition of global figures instead of just collections of simpler and separate elements such as points, lines and curves.

In this painting and many of Kandinsky’s works, the identification of the forms and the masses present on the canvas is an initial view. The inner reality of the work requires more profound observation of the relationship of all the elements and their harmony.

Wassily Kandinsky is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, he studying law and economics and began painting studies at the age of 30. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Communist Moscow, and he moved to Germany in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art.